


you made me a believer

by haloud



Category: Tales of Berseria
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 04:32:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9701897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud/pseuds/haloud
Summary: The confrontation with Melchior in Aball leaves Eizen with a whirling mind and an unshakable conviction.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from believer by imagine dragons

Eizen knows.  It’s hard not to; it’s impossible; it’s unfathomable.  He knows it in the prickle of his neck, in the sharpness of those eyes that look straight past Velvet and straight into the core of Eizen’s brain.  He wants to believe that Aifread does not, could not, know him.  Not now, not like this.  Not when he manifests in front of Melchior and swipes Eizen’s attack aside with a crushing blow to the chest.  Eizen has no god to hear his prayers, but he can feel the begging build in his throat as they walk away from Aball. 

_Oh, let him not know me.  Let him forget.  I’ll rip the heart from his chest regardless but please let him be a demon like any other._

“You’ve finally decided to obey me,” Melchior had said.  Because, of course, Aifread could be nothing but the most contrary creature on the planet to any given order, whether he was human or demon or whatever in between.

So Eizen knows.  He knows that the brain and heart of Captain Aifread still lurk inside that concave torso, behind those glassed eyes.  He avoids his own gaze in the warped mirror someone set up inside the makeshift inn at Titania as he prods the bruised swathe across his chest for broken ribs. 

The whole debacle at Aball—Eizen saw how quickly Velvet unspooled, how quickly time wound back at the slightest glimmer of an idea that things could once be as they were.  Would the same be true for him, to the opposite effect?  Eizen hasn’t been a man for doubt, not for many years.  Not since joining Aifread’s crew.  With Aifread a demon, uncaring about his former crew, and soon to be dead at Eizen’s hand (for he’d allow none other), how quickly could the right words from that demon send him spiraling back to the place of a haunted boy huddling in the cabin of a cursed boat?

Things are, assuredly, different now.  No accident of luck or separation of death will alter the effect Aifread has had on Eizen’s life.  Armed with the confidence and faith in life that serving on the Van Eltia has given him, Eizen is further from despair than he ever dreamed possible.  Even staring down the certainty that Captain Aifread, the man who gave him purpose, the human that—despite everything, despite having lived for a millennium before even Aifread’s birth, despite Aifread’s humanity and all the malevolence that entails…Eizen never truly thought he would one day live in a world without.

He hasn’t said a word yet to the group.  His lashing out at Eleanor was unworthy, but apologies dry up on his tongue.  How could he give a meaningful apology without divulging the reason for his tangled emotions and harsh accusations?

He doesn’t want, yet, to bare his grief.  Can’t bear the thought of Rokurou’s brash comfort or the grim silence Magilou dons when she doesn’t know what to say.  Laphicet’s earnest sympathy, Eleanor’s deep compassion—and gods, what in gods’ name is he meant to tell the crew?

And Velvet, worst of all.  It would be so easy to entwine his rage with hers, to seek his vengeance until it consumes him and drags him down to the depths.  There’s something viciously appealing in her single-minded darkness.  The temptation will swell up sick between them the moment he airs what he knows to be true.  It will likely go unspoken, but it will grow and grow, and Eizen wants nothing to taint the battle he sees on the horizon. 

He will kill the demon Aifread, and then he will go.  He will take to the seas, or to the skies, or to elsewhere.  The world will turn.  Hand on the rudder, he makes his own way.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me at haloud.tumblr.com, where i still haven't finished tales of berseria


End file.
